P.M. Sharif Returns Home After Surgery in London

The prime minister had spent six weeks in the U.K. recovering from open-heart surgery.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned home from London on Saturday after undergoing successful open-heart surgery in the British capital, officials said.

Sharif, whose operation was carried out in the last week of May, remained in the U.K. for more than six weeks.

It was the 66-year-old’s second major cardiac medical procedure in five years.

“Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s plane has landed in Lahore and he will be going to his family home in Raiwind via a helicopter from the airport,” said Abdullah Khan Sumbal, a senior administration official in Lahore.

A close aide of the Sharif family Khawaja Ahmad Hassan said “the P.M. is healthy,” and that “the entire family and the party workers are happy about his return.”

Sharif left the country shortly after the so-called Panama Papers linked his family to a series of offshore companies. The premier insists his family has done “nothing wrong,” saying the claims had been investigated twice, decades ago, under the tenure of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.

But the opposition has demanded his resignation after the leaked papers claimed his children owned London property through an offshore company.

Sharif’s daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif had earlier tweeted to her almost two million followers that the surgery had been successful.